Chapter 64
'The Wound That Licks Its Own Scab.'
Dtsssh!
'He forged a cage from shadows, trapping the enemy while shielding me.
Those shadows… they lived on my pain and anger, absorbing the enemy's attacks, then returning them with the same depth of hatred.'
Dooong!
'And in the end, the shadow could no longer distinguish between the enemy and me.
We were both wounded.
We were both licking our own wounds just to survive.'
The world frozen around them granted Theo a space where nothing could hinder him—space he never asked for, yet became the stage for his survival instinct.
Within the thickening silence, he focused every sliver of awareness on the unseen danger lingering close enough to feel its breath against his throat.
His body remained in the stance of a samurai who had not drawn his sword, yet the power rising from his core surpassed the limits of physical form.
Five sword techniques awakened within him simultaneously, each summoning memories of a game world that had now swallowed the reality he once stood upon.
One by one, the mechanics of each technique unfolded, revealing a spectrum of colors glowing without light—abstract forms yet to choose their shape.
Each technique arrived with its own identity, cloaking Theo in an aura that should only exist within data and algorithms.
The first technique was born from a breath so subtle it nearly vanished.
One Point, Nine Acupuncture Complete manifested as a bluish slash layered into nine shadowed directions.
Though his sword never left its sheath, the intensity of the slashes multiplied by the principle of nine; within seconds, the potential of dozens of strikes hung in the frozen air.
Following behind it, 10 Lines, 15 Sufferings rose like a slick serpent, weaving movements of violet prepared to coil and pierce anything that tried to halt its advance.
The technique waited with lethal patience, mimicking a predator that understood momentum more deeply than sheer strength.
When the two techniques merged with Gate Opened, Suffering Unleashed, the frozen air lost its stability.
Swamp-green light flowed from Theo's center, doubling the existing power, binding blue and purple into a force capable of shaking the earth's crust if he wished.
The world remained frozen, but the techniques made the air vibrate at a frequency perceivable only by spirits.
The fourth and fifth techniques appeared not as weapons, but as declarations of something more abstract.
Lantern That Buries the Outdated World expanded the silence with a spiral of ashen white fading into pale pink.
Those emotional petals drifted without gravity, carrying the scent of loss that shouldn't exist in a halted world.
Each petal sliced something unseen—severing the threads binding past and future in a single cut.
The Wound That Licks Its Own Scab then circled him as dense black shadows moving in a pattern only Theo understood.
The shadows formed a ring that held the space, absorbing latent energy from threats not yet revealed.
When that energy accumulated, the shadows moved like wounds aware of their own life, ready to return every attack in a form far darker—and far more painful—than its original.
'You are no longer five separate directions.
You have merged into a single straight line born from anger, from fear, from the knowledge that the script of reality has been stained by foreign hands.'
Huaaaang!
'Multiply yourselves as ninefold principles demand.
Pierce the strongest defenses; even bones forged by conviction must shatter.
Multiply suffering, multiply every meaning you carry—let this world learn that pain knows no boundaries.'
Fiiihhh!
'Cut everything that binds him to this world.
Memories, emotions, destiny—destroy them all.
Let him wander lost, the same way I became lost when I wrote Last Prayer with my own hands.'
Tsuuung–tsaaang!
'And lastly, absorb it all.
Do not allow the enemy's energy to pass without consequence.
Devour, transform, and release it in the purest form of hatred and fear.'
A soundless burst of light surged from Theo's body the moment the five techniques reached their full form.
The world frozen by the speed of One Point, Nine Acupuncture Complete cracked in silence, as if the surrounding space could not endure the vibrations being woven.
His rage condensed into a single core, pulling in every possibility—turning the energy of all techniques into one pulsating current like a cosmic heart.
The bluish slashes that had been suspended in the air now folded upon themselves, multiplying according to the law of nine—forming fractal patterns that expanded endlessly.
In the dense silence, the world shuddered again and again, unable to keep up with the acceleration Theo forced upon the halted reality.
The violet technique of 10 Lines, 15 Sufferings twined through the blue, forming spirals that forgot the limitations of physical matter.
No bone was hard enough, no substance dense enough, no structure existent enough to endure.
Its movement resembled a serpent devouring the timeline, erasing obstacles before they could even define themselves.
When the purple vortex touched Gate Opened, Suffering Unleashed, murky green erupted like a swamp crashing into the sky.
Its presence doubled the destruction embedded within the two previous techniques, dragging their intensity into a single strike that grew deeper, heavier, more devastating.
Together, the three techniques transformed the frozen air into a fragile mirror laced with thin cracks waiting to break.
The ashen-white spiral of Lantern That Buries the Outdated World then ignited the silence in its own manner.
The falling petals were no longer mere symbols of broken memory and fate—they became fragments of destiny severed by Theo's intent.
They slid into the blue-purple-green vortex, releasing waves of helplessness that crawled across everything before them.
Each petal caught in the current became an emotional blade cutting the ties between the enemy and everything they once loved—turning the attack into one that destroyed not only the body, but the meaning of life itself.
The frozen world did not shatter, but fell mute beneath a foreign grief sinking so deeply it resembled an endless night.
Around the swirling lights, the black shadows of The Wound That Licks Its Own Scab formed a circling ring without discernible pattern.
They absorbed every scrap of movement that existed before the world froze, holding it like a wound that closed, reopened, and closed again.
When Theo commanded the five techniques to merge, those shadows consumed the colliding intensities, returning them in the wildest form imaginable.
Enemy energy, world energy, even the energy of halted seconds—all were pulled in and forced into a strike that no force could block nor evade.
The strike launched forward.
Not as a slash, but as a new reality birthed from the will of a man refusing to be bound by the world that trapped him.
'Good. Keep walking forward.
Show your threat without pause.The world must learn the fury of a writer whose words were stolen.'
To be continued…